Upward Dreams, Downward Mobility
Author: Frederick R. Strobel
Publisher:
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK'A very personal perspective on what has happened to the middle class in America.'-CHOICE
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Dream Hoarders
Author: Richard V. Reeves
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2018-05-08
Total Pages: 206
ISBN-13: 0815735499
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America. In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else. The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child. Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it. Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.
Basic Thinking
Author: Wilmer MacNair
Publisher: University Press of America
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9780819198419
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn a book that has sociology turning its attention to economics and politics, Basic Thinking is an exercise in hard thinking. MacNair shuns the popular 'current events' approach to national and global issues and works to employ a newer and more fundamental conception and analysis of production, distribution, and trade. Contents: What Basic Thinking Is; Money; Community; Justice and the Market; Individual and Community Decision-making; The Individual-Group Problem; Capitalism and Human Beings; Leadership and Knowledge; Type of Leadership; Affordability and Debt; Patriotism and Humanity.
Getting Ahead
Author: Daniel P. McMurrer
Publisher: The Urban Insitute
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 120
ISBN-13: 9780877666745
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAdapted in part from the "Opportunity in America" series of policy briefs, this volume focuses on social and economic mobility in the United States. Class or family background has a strong effect on individual success, the authors find. They examine the possible reasons for this relationship; how it has changed over the past century; and the role of the economy, the welfare system, and education in opening up opportunities for the less fortunate.
Celebrity Culture and the American Dream
Author: Karen Sternheimer
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-12-12
Total Pages: 290
ISBN-13: 1317689682
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCelebrity Culture and the American Dream, Second Edition considers how major economic and historical factors shaped the nature of celebrity culture as we know it today, retaining the first edition’s examples from the first celebrity fan magazines of 1911 to the present and expanding to include updated examples and additional discussion on the role of the internet and social media in today’s celebrity culture. Equally important, the book explains how and why the story of Hollywood celebrities matters, sociologically speaking, to an understanding of American society, to the changing nature of the American Dream, and to the relation between class and culture. This book is an ideal addition to courses on inequalities, celebrity culture, media, and cultural studies.
The Selfless Way of Christ
Author: Henri Nouwen
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 2011-10-24
Total Pages: 65
ISBN-13: 157075943X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"When I first came across Nouwen's phase 'downward mobility, ' it struck me as radical, counterintuitive, and profoundly true. His reminder of Jesus' message goes against nearly everything in modern life, but ignoring it has led to most of the urgent problems we now face: global warming, poverty, and a deep sense of alienation. Perhaps it is not too late to change, and Henri Nouwen has shown the way." Philip Yancy In this short work, Henri Nouwen offers a penetrating reflection on the challenge of the spiritual life, especially the call to imitate Christ's example of "downward mobility." Illustrated with drawings by Vincent van Gogh, The Selfless Way of Christ is an inspiring guide for ministers and everyone walking the path of discipleship.
Facing Up to the American Dream
Author: Jennifer L. Hochschild
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1996-08-05
Total Pages: 433
ISBN-13: 1400821738
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of our society, and yet we possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. In this compassionate but frightening book, Hochschild attributes our national distress to the ways in which whites and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites and especially of blacks of various social classes, Hochschild demonstrates that America's only unifying vision may soon vanish in the face of racial conflict and discontent. Hochschild combines survey data and vivid anecdote to clarify several paradoxes. Since the 1960s white Americans have seen African Americans as having better and better chances to achieve the dream. At the same time middle-class blacks, by now one-third of the African American population, have become increasingly frustrated personally and anxious about the progress of their race. Most poor blacks, however, cling with astonishing strength to the notion that they and their families can succeed--despite their terrible, perhaps worsening, living conditions. Meanwhile, a tiny number of the estranged poor, who have completely given up on the American dream or any other faith, threaten the social fabric of the black community and the very lives of their fellow blacks. Hochschild probes these patterns and gives them historical depth by comparing the experience of today's African Americans to that of white ethnic immigrants at the turn of the century. She concludes by claiming that America's only alternative to the social disaster of intensified racial conflict lies in the inclusiveness, optimism, discipline, and high-mindedness of the American dream at its best.
Poorly Understood
Author: Mark Robert Rank
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-03-01
Total Pages: 257
ISBN-13: 0190881402
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat if the idealized image of American societya land of opportunity that will reward hard work with economic successis completely wrong? Few topics have as many myths, stereotypes, and misperceptions surrounding them as that of poverty in America. The poor have been badly misunderstood since the beginnings of the country, with the rhetoric only ratcheting up in recent times. Our current era of fake news, alternative facts, and media partisanship has led to a breeding ground for all types of myths and misinformation to gain traction and legitimacy. Poorly Understood is the first book to systematically address and confront many of the most widespread myths pertaining to poverty. Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock powerfully demonstrate that the realities of poverty are much different than the myths; indeed in many ways they are more disturbing. The idealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, with hard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. But what if this picture is wrong? What if poverty is an experience that touches the majority of Americans? What if hard work does not necessarily lead to economic well-being? What if the reasons for poverty are largely beyond the control of individuals? And if all of the evidence necessary to disprove these myths has been readily available for years, why do they remain so stubbornly pervasive? These are much more disturbing realities to consider because they call into question the very core of America's identity. Armed with the latest research, Poorly Understood not only challenges the myths of poverty and inequality, but it explains why these myths continue to exist, providing an innovative blueprint for how the nation can move forward to effectively alleviate American poverty.
The Future of Global Conflict
Author: Volker Bornschier
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 1999-05-12
Total Pages: 321
ISBN-13: 1848609078
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis critical analysis of long-term trends and recent developments in world systems examines such questions as: Will the cycles of boom and bust, peace and war of the past 500 years continue? Or have either long-term trends or recent changes so profoundly altered the structure of world systems that these cycles will end or take on a less destructive form? The noted international contributors to this volume examine the question of future dominance of the core global systems and include comprehensive discussions of the economic, political and military role of the Pacific Rim, Japan and the former Soviet Union.
Privilege Lost
Author: Jessi Streib
Publisher:
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 193
ISBN-13: 0190854049
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThere are two narratives of the American class structure: one of a country with boundless opportunities for upward mobility and one of a rigid class system in which the rich stay rich while the poor stay poor. Each of these narratives holds some truth, but each overlooks another. In Privilege Lost, Jessi Streib traces the lives of over 100 youth born into the upper-middle-class. Following them for over ten years as they transition from teens to young adults, Streib examines who falls from the upper-middle-class, how, and why don't they see it coming. In doing so, she reveals the patterned ways that individuals' resources and identities push them onto mobility paths--and the complicated choices youth make between staying true to themselves and staying in their class position. Engaging and eye-opening, Privilege Lost brings to life the stories of the downwardly mobile and highlights what they reveal about class, privilege, and American family life.
